Kirsteen Paton

HSA Special Issue: Housing in “Hard Times”: Marginality, Inequality and Class

Abstract This paper reasserts the relationship between class and housing through a sociological exploration of working-class place attachment, against the backdrop of a recession and government “disinvestment” in social housing. These are hard times for housing and harder still if you are working class. Interest in working-class lives within sociological research has declined; meanwhile, place attachment is deemed a middle-class proclivity of “elective belonging”: a source of place-based identity in response to ontological insecurity. I draw from an ethnographic exploration of Partick, Glasgow to demonstrate how working-class residents express strong “elective belonging” in financially and ontologically insecure times yet, paradoxically, their ability to stay physically “fixed” to place is weakened. I argue that working-class place attachment is broadly characterized by strong “elective belonging” and poor “elective fixity”: choice and control over one’s ability to stay fixed within their neighbourhood.

Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective

Contents: Introduction Restructuring theory Restructuring class identity Elective belonging and fixity to place Gentrifying working-class subjects: participating in consumer citizenship The paradox of gentrification: displacing the working-class subject Conclusions: reinvigorating urban class analysis Appendix Bibliography Index.

It’s the State, Stupid: 21st Gentrification and State-Led Evictions

In this paper we show how the form and effects of gentrification have advanced in the post crash, recessionary context. As such, we argue that state-led gentrification contributes to state-led evictions. The cumulative impacts of government cuts and the paradigmatic shift of housing from a social to financialised entity not only increases eviction risk amongst low income households but, through various legal repossession frameworks that prioritise ownership, the state actively endorses it. Given the nature and extent of these changes in housing, we argue that the state-led gentrification has advanced further. Evictions, we argue, are the new urban frontier and this is orchestrated by the state in fundamental ways.

The emerging cannabis treatment population

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine recent trends in presentation to treatment where cannabis is identified as the primary drug. Design/methodology/approach – Data is drawn from the recently published Public Health England report and supplemented with Home Office and European data. Findings – The data shows a marked increase in presentations for cannabis treatment over recent years. The authors offer some potential explanations for this trend. Research limitations/implications – The authors need to improve our understanding of the type of cannabis that is available and how specifically it is used. In parallel there is a pressing need for an evaluation of evidence in relation to treatment for problematic cannabis users. Originality/value – This paper highlights this recent trend in treatment presentations, offers some potential explanations and makes associated recommendations.

Probing the symptomatic silences of middle‐class settlement: A case study of gentrification processes in Glasgow

This paper critiques the use of gentrification within urban policy by examining gentrifiers’ neighbourhood practices. Strategies of gentrification are increasingly used to attract people and capital to places of ‘decline’ in order to combat the effects of uneven development. Policy experts and governments believe middle‐class settlement creates ‘cohesive’, socially mixed communities. However, such a strategy may have serious unintended and paradoxical consequences. Despite widespread application we know little about the outcomes of gentrification within urban policy. This paper seeks to rectify this by critically examining the hegemony of gentrification. This is explored empirically by examining the practices of gentrifiers. Hegemony normalises governance, which essentialises middle‐class settlement and legitimates their residential practices, over those of working‐class communities. Analysis of changes in the Park area in Glasgow reveals that incoming residents’ choices and practices centre around the consumption of segregation. The paper argues that bringing middle‐class groups into the debate and foregrounding their autonomy not only helps in aiding the evaluation of these policies; it elucidates how their practices actually impact upon working‐class communities, the supposed beneficiaries of their arrival.

Exploring the use of large sporting events in the post-crash, post-welfare city: A ‘legacy’ of increasing insecurity?:

Large-scale sporting events are a major part of urban policy and regeneration strategies in the UK and globally. These events court as much controversy and criticism from academics and community groups as they are coveted by local and national governments. While they claim to have lasting long-term benefits for the host cities, neighbourhoods and ergo residents, evidence shows that effects are often scant, oblique or, conversely, negative. This has new significance in the context of austerity. This paper offers original empirical evidence of the experiences surrounding the Glasgow Commonwealth Games 2014. A series of diaries and focus groups with those living and working in the East End of Glasgow revealed hope of a positive impact on the East End, but this coincided with anxiety and feelings of exclusion around the Commonwealth Games 2014. It explores the current form that urban social policy takes in the post-crash, post-welfare context, as exemplified by the Commonwealth Games. The paper goes on to raise questions about the real winners of large sporting events.

Cannabis matters? Treatment responses to increasing cannabis presentations in addiction services in England

Abstract Aims: To conduct a pilot project exploring how treatment providers understood the increasing demand of people presenting to services with cannabis-related problems and how they responded to the demand for this type of treatment in the absence of an up to date evidence-base. Methods: A knowledge exchange event involving treatment providers (n = 30) from one region in the United Kingdom supplemented by qualitative interviews (n = 8) and focus groups with drug treatment staff (n = 5) was conducted. A thematic analysis of this material was then conducted. Findings: Five distinct themes emerged. First, numerous routes were identified into services for problematic cannabis users. Second, access to treatment for some groups is an issue. Third, the type of treatment offered varies considerably within and across services. Fourth, cannabis use was viewed as benign by many staff and clients with noticeable variations of risk. Finally, there is an acknowledgment that there is an evolving connoisseurship associated with contemporary cannabis use whereby the client has increasing expertise in relation to contemporary cannabis consumption that has yet to fully filter through to the practice of treatment providers. Conclusions: There appears to be a gap between treatment demand and evidence-based treatment for cannabis-related problems, so that while the trend in treatment demand continues to rise the translation of the evidence base into practise for effective treatment strategies has not kept pace with this demand.

Beyond legacy: Backstage stigmatisation and ‘trickle-up’ politics of urban regeneration:

This article explores how stigmatisation is intimately linked with neoliberal governance and capital accumulation in specific ways through processes around the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. It advances the author’s previous research exploring the effects of stigma on the East End community hosting the Games, by looking at some of the processes of power and profit which motivate stigmatising processes by ‘gazing up’, rather than ‘gazing down’. That is, looking at the role of the stigmatisers in this project and not the stigmatised. It draws loosely on Goffman’s concept of ‘backstage’ to shed light on those who produce and profit from these stigmatisation processes, including government bodies and actors and private business interests. Looking at some of the processes through which stigmatisation is profited from reveals not only forms of power vital to this process but that it is a key form of exploitation integral to capital accumulation. Under austerity, the political economy of the Games constitutes state support of private finance and a simultaneous withdrawal of social welfare support, which transfers the burden of debt from the state to the individual and wealth from public funds to private funds.